


Gardens of Coral And Pearl

by twofoldAxiom



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dragons, Drowning, Emetophobia, Harems, Kingdomstuck, M/M, Magic, Mermaids, More tags to be added, Multi, Rarepair, Sea Monsters, Something like that anyway, Spoiler warnings, fantasystuck, made-up mythology, thalassophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-01-06 08:11:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 21,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12207270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofoldAxiom/pseuds/twofoldAxiom
Summary: Your name is Dirk Strider, and you're just a dancer in the Golden Queen's court, but the favorite of the troupe besides. You're also the Golden Prince's best friend- though you wish you were more. But when Jake is poisoned by an assassin at his eighteenth birthday party, there's nothing you think you can do to save him, until he tells you a story, dark and sorrowful, fully expecting to die.You've never been one for fishermen's magic, but all the same, you row out in the middle of a New Moon night, with your soul and a story to make a bargain to the sea.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cervineghost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cervineghost/gifts).



> A birthday gift for my friend Cervineghost/[dualitat](http://dualitat.tumblr.com/). I hope to continue this!
> 
> Also loosely inspired by Diluain's "Timrion, Flawless", but I went weird with it. Like. Hella weird.
> 
> WARNING: There's some pretty nasty vomiting in this chapter, I apologize for that.

You hold your breath despite your heart pounding and your lungs screaming. You look up past your bangs and the sweat dripping on your eyelashes. Your left eye stings with it, but you ignore it in favor of waiting.

A beat passes.

Then another.

You straighten up and take a bow, and the room applauds. The music starts up again, slower, but it’s background noise now. From her throne, the Golden Queen raises a glass to you. You can’t see most of her face; it’s a formal event, so she wears a veil over it, just translucent enough that you can make out the shadowy shapes of her behind it. But you know she’s smiling with pride. She always does when she asks you to dance.

You’re well aware that you do more than dance. You fucking  _ fly _ .

Breathing hard, you grab a goblet from a nearby servant’s tray, winking at him before you pour the water down your throat and then over your head, shaking it out of your hair before you make your way out of the stifling circle you’d danced into the crowd.

Your name is Dirk Strider and you’re the favorite dancer of the Golden Queen’s court, for damn good reason. You shake the last of the water out of your hair and have the servant refill your goblet before, sweaty and soaked and the fine silk of your costume clinging to your body, you step out onto the balcony and leave the party behind you. 

It’s practically freezing in the seabreeze and sunset, but after the stifling heat you’ve built up from your performance, you welcome it.

Jake is waiting there, sitting on the railing with his feet dangling over the twilight-reddened sea. You’re momentarily tempted to spook him, but you have more self-control than that. Besides, his guard of the day is eyeing you, and you know for a fact that it’s not because he thinks you’re hot.

Instead you approach quietly, and wait a moment until Jake notices your presence before you speak.

“Were you watching?” You ask, as you lean over the railing, crossing one foot behind an ankle and wiping sweat off your face. Your eye still stings with perfume and sweat, and you’re dehydrated, but that can wait.

Jake turns to look at you properly, face alight with realization as he turns his face towards the party in dismay. “You danced already? Nobody called me!”

“You didn’t hear the drums.” It’s more a statement than a question. You turn around so you can regard him more easily, elbows resting on the guardrail. “Shame. I was on fire back there. Cutting up the tile like a cat on an imported rug, you know.” You check your fingernails for dirt that you know isn’t there. You let yourself smile. “I’m disappointed, Jake. What’s the Golden Prince doing not enjoying his own birthday party, anyway?”

He sighs, and laughs, almost a giggle in that breathy way he does on the exhale when he’s feeling scrutinized. He wipes his glasses down on the front of his vest and puts them back on. “It’s stuffy in there, is all. So many people… I can’t get used to it. I kept telling my grandmother I’d rather  _ go _ somewhere for my eighteenth, you know, like I did when I was younger.”

“Mmh.” You nod tiredly. “Yeah, I can see that. You’d rather be getting mud all over yourself as you frolic through a rice field and give a farmer a heart attack thinking any minute now the guards will shoot them for looking at you funny.”

“I  _ know _ .” He sighs, burying his face in his hands. You’re not sure if he means he’d rather do that or he knows the consequences. “I just. It’s been a long time since I got out, without being followed by guards or grandmother’s spies. I feel like a child again, being followed this way and that by a nanny.” 

He straightens his back, voice pitched in a ridiculous falsetto. “My prince, don’t wander off! My prince, don’t play in the grass! My prince, oh dear, my prince, you’ll give poor old Keziah her death like this!”

“You kind of did.” You shrug as Jake squawks with the most affronted look on his face. He slides off the railing and his voice goes back to normal, though still sounding affronted.

“I most certainly did not! She was old!”

“And I’m pretty sure you shaved a decade off her life with your antics.” You have to hide a laugh.

“You helped!”

“ _ I  _ got you a shitty archery set,  _ you _ somehow made a crossbow of it and shot her in the knee.”

He whines. “...It was a  _ weak _ hit.”

“Still probably scared a decade off her life, gods rest her soul.”

“God rest  _ my  _ soul,” The guard grumbles. “If I have to keep watching you two go at it and don’t get a smoke break any time soon. Shouldn’t you speak to the Golden Prince with a scratch more respect, Dirk?”

“Oh, yeah, like you’re one to talk, bro; I’ve seen you wrestle non-metaphorically and I’m pretty sure you’ve got more trouble up your sleeve than a dancer like me.” You turn to the guard- Dave, your brother, tight-lipped and trying not to smile, like he always does- and gesture to the stairway leading to the beach below. “How about you come with us down there and take one, yeah? I need to splash around a bit, Jake needs to get out of this party, and you need that sweet, smoky buzz. Sound good with all of you?”

“Well…” Jake looks to the party, at his grandmother conversing with some courtier or other. It doesn’t even take you the time to open your mouth before he changes his mind, though he still makes it sound like it’s not his decision. He smiles, brightly. “Well, you said so yourself. Whatever you think is best.”

Dave shrugs and gestures to the stairway, unhooking the latch that keeps the little wooden gate closed. It swings open invitingly, the smooth stone steps melting into the sand at the bottom.

You wrap one of your scarves around your hand and take Jake’s so Dave can’t half-heartedly nag about you touching him without permission. 

“My Prince.” You say, as you raise Jake’s hand and begin to lead him down the stairs. He keeps one hand on the marble banister to your left, and you keep your free hand on the sun-warmed mosaic to the right. Dave follows behind you, shutting the little gate like a secret, one hand on his sword’s pommel at all times.

And of course, as soon as your bare feet meet the sand, Jake slips his hand out of yours. Sometimes you wonder when he got so averse to touching you, but you’re already sure you’re not going to get anywhere asking him about it.

“Not too close to the water.” Dave warns Jake. “You have to be upstairs soon, for the queen’s announcements.”

“Thank you, Dave.” And Jake sounds like he really means it when he thanks him. He wades purposely into the surf. “I was already wet with the sea spray, though, so too little too late, I’m afraid; may as well get on with it, right? You can smoke over there and Dirk and I will cool off.”

He shrugs, fiddling with the pouch at his belt where you know he keeps his smoking papers, so he  _ definitely _ won’t be coming after you while you’re in the water, but either way you’re already following Jake into the surf.  It’s stunningly clear, this close to shore; besides the bits of kelp and the algae slicking the stone you’re standing on, waving in the currents, you could almost believe the water wasn’t there at all.

You stiffen up in shock as cold water splashes up your side, all the way to your face. Jake looks innocently, impishly, at the water dripping down your hair.

“You know, it’s really hard to believe you just turned eighteen with that smug look on your face.” You say, and flick water back at him. It splashes on his glasses, but he laughs and takes them off, folding the stems and hooking them into his shirt. You can’t help the smile that curls your mouth; he’s infectious like this. “Go hunt some crabs or something, you can hide them in your room like you did when you were twelve.”

“You keep bringing up what I’ve done as a child, I wish I’d known you as more than a passing face back then so I could do the same thing.” He sighs, dramatically. Then he brightens and dunks himself under the water, so fast you could swear he dove in.

“What.” You stare at the bubbles as he pokes around, and then he finally comes up with something clutched in his fingers like a treasure. He shows you a handful of sand.

“... What?” You ask again, pointedly. He wipes off more of the sand and reveals a flat, stony disc, wide as his palm. “What is it?”

“A mermaid’s coin. Or piece of a soul given to the sea, or a wish in potential, if you believe that sort of thing. They’re supposed to be good luck.” He turns it over in his fingers. “This is a pretty big one! It’s been a long time since I’d seen any around here.”

You smile. You’ve heard the stories, though never seen one before. It’s pretty, in a dead, bleached sort of way. It reminds you of your brother’s bones. “You should give it to Dave, he’ll get the gesture of it more.” You say, but he shakes his head and presses it into your fingers.

“Come now, I haven’t given you a gift in a long time. You should have it.” He says. His eyes twinkle, green as springtime. “I’ll get you something nice to set it in, and you can wear it when you dance for us. Silver, maybe, to go with your hair.”

You don’t think it would look very good set in anything. A little morbid, even. But you thank him and close your fingers around it, slipping it into your pocket.

Dave calls the two of you from the shore. “The Golden Queen is making an announcement you  _ children. _ ” He yells, and yet not; his voice carries so well on the wind it sounds almost like he’s just speaking. You look at Jake and your soaked clothes. He does the same for you.

“We should probably change first, even if we’ll be late.” He says, sheepishly. You splash him again.

The both of you trudge back to shore, Jake stopping every few seconds to show you something new- a golden cowrie bright as amber, a rosy tellina like carved pink pearl, a pufferfish darting past. You have to pull him away from each one with a firm squeeze of his wrist, and he laughs every time, like you’ve tickled him.

“You can come back for seashells later.” Dave tells him, and the three of you make your way back up the stairs. You hang back when Jake is called inside for the announcement, and you don’t listen very closely, but there’s cheering and raised goblets and hand-shaking before it’s done.

His eighteenth birthday, you think. Soon he’ll be King. He’s trained for it his whole life, so you’re not as worried as you could be. You curl your fingers around the mermaid’s coin in your pocket, and you wonder what wish you ought to spend it on.

Someone screams. 

The party grinds to a halt, heads turned towards the sound. You hear retching, blood-curdling and sick, and a thud. More screaming.

Dread curls in the back of your mind. You clutch the coin tighter and stride purposefully into the crowd, pushing through dumbfounded, terrified courtiers towards the center. Your heart is pounding, and you only think of the Queen and Jake. Assassins?

It must be so. Jake is still retching, his face red with the effort of it. A pool of vomit spreads at his knees, curdles of food and wine. The smell reaches you then- poison. The Golden Queen is already dead beside him, her veil stained with blood and bile.

The guards troop in immediately, the ones dressed as servants or guests with chainmail beneath their finery slough off decorations and start herding guests towards the center of the atrium. No one will be allowed to leave until the assassin is found, while Jake is hurried to the palace physician on a stretcher, still convulsing.

You call out to him but he doesn’t hear. You stand frozen in place as the guards and guests bustle around you, shouting, trying to flee, trying to control the crowd. Your brother lays a hand on your shoulder and pulls you away from it all, and the look on his face makes it clear what he means even before he mutters for you, “Go.”

You tear out of there, towards the physician’s chambers, following the sound of Jake’s wretched coughing.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm not going to try to _finish_ the story by dualitat's birthday, but I'm sure as hell going to try to write as much as I can in the meantime.
> 
> Thalassophobia warning.

Jake’s coronation will come early, if it comes at all. News of the Golden Queen’s demise is spreading fast, and you know there are several Noble Houses that would love to find some way to capitalize on it, to either have their get beside Jake on the throne or to depose him before he even has the chance to be King.

You don’t care so much for the political implications, though. The Golden Queen- you loved her, in a way, at first as your liege, and then something like a grandmother of your own, full of stories and silent mischief. Now she’s dead, and Jake...

You rub your temples and fight back the urge to vomit yourself. He’s stopped retching now, you don’t hear him spilling the contents of his guts every few minutes anymore, or dry-heaving so hard they had to tie him down lest he break his back, but the royal physician tells you he’s running a fever that could prove lethal if they don’t identify the poison and the cure within the night.

“It’s just as well that you had him away with you, that he didn’t have more of the poisoned wine.” The physician tells you. You nod dumbly. Your lips still taste of sea salt. Whatever poison it is, it’s acting fast, and you can all see Jake crumbling in on himself as the minutes go by. He’s stopped screaming, too, but he can’t keep down anything but water, and even that’s chancy. Tracks of bloody drool leak from the corners of his mouth.

He calls for you, weak and shivery. You feel a sharp, icy flutter under your ribs as you approach his bed. They’d transferred him back to his rooms, overlooking the sea, but the pillows are flecked with brown and red and his eyes are sunken in their sockets.

It aches when he smiles at you. “I’d hoped they’d at least get it over with quickly.” He says, voice raspy in his bile-burned throat, and you wish you could slap him for it without being hanged for treason. His hands are horrifyingly warm, wet with sweat, when he clasps one of yours between them.

“Jake,” You growl, and you’re surprised at the vehemence in the sound. You lick your lips again and stroke his hands. “You’re not even crowned yet. They’re telling me you only have a night left to live if they can’t figure out the poison, don’t do this to us. Don’t do this to  _ me. _ ”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” He answers you, and for a moment you hate yourself a little more for what just came out of your mouth. You’re a selfish bastard, asking this of him when  _ he’s _ the one lying on his deathbed.

And Jake, loveable piece of shit he is, silently forgives you with a smile. “Do you still have that mermaid’s coin?”

“Is this really the time?” Your voice cracks. He shushes you, gestures for you to show it to him. You’re not going to defy a dying man’s wish, so you shakily fish it out of your pocket and hold it up to the light. Sunlight streams through the little slots along the edge, from the open window.

“You can make a wish with that tonight.” He says. He chuckles, even, though it sounds like he’s caving in just from the effort of that. “A wish in potential. A drowned man’s soul. Wish for the kingdom to prosper without me, it’s going to need it. You’re strong enough to make a wish like that.”

“You  _ fucker _ ,” You almost throw the shell across the room. Your hand trembles, but you hold it like a precious thing all the same. “I can’t just make a wish for nothing!”

He looks very serious, all of a sudden, and the warmth goes out of his eyes. He grips you by the wrist, fingers trembling with it. “Listen to me.” He says. Your voice catches in your throat. “Listen. I know stories. I know this. What you hold is a dead man’s soul and a dead man’s final wish. That’s a powerful thing to hold, Dirk.”

“Are you delusional?” You hiss.

“No, but I know I’m dying.” His lips are pressed in a thin line, so dark you can’t quite see the seam of them anymore. The blood gleams on them like drops of garnet. “And I know how old these fishermen’s tales really are. If they can’t cure me, I want you to make that wish tonight. Do you know why?”

You’re too afraid to ask. He answers anyway, and the words make a chill go up your spine, like a memory of looking over the edge of a boat at night. “It’s Spring tide on a New Moon. The sea is high and things stir in the deep. There are powers at work tonight that might…”  _ That might save me. _ He doesn’t say it. He shakes his head. “The price is too high for me to ask of you. I’m sorry for saying it. Make another wish. Make a wish for yourself.”

You almost crush the little disc in your fingers in rage, but the look on your face is nothing but grief. You want to stroke his cheek, or hold his hand, or something- anything. But you know you can’t. There’s a knock on the door before you can question it further.

He mumbles to you. An old rhyme, from a storybook, which makes it even more ridiculous: Seven of silver and a drowned man’s soul, silver and salt and a night black as coal. The dragon king stirs in the briny below, he’ll grant you a wish if you’ve courage to go.

Your time with him is up, for now. It might be forever if you don’t think of something to do. You slip the mermaid’s coin back into your pocket and leave the room, pondering his words.

Realistically, they’re complete nonsense. But you’re not in a realistic state of mind. The palace physicians have more at their disposal than you do.

_ Make a wish for yourself.  _ You can only think of one wish you want right now. You don’t really believe it, but you look to the setting sun, the wine-dark sea stretching into the horizon. You hold the mermaid’s coin tight, feel the sand-roughened edges, the star in the center against the pads of your fingers.

_ Make a wish for yourself. _

You straighten your back and head for your quarters. You’ll need something sturdier than your dancer’s silks to do what you’re going to do. 

You’re not sure if you’re going to come back to dance again if you do, though. All throughout, as you change your silks for sensible day clothes, heavy boots, heavy gloves, a small pouch of money, you hold onto the mermaid’s coin like a talisman. It’s just as well that Dave is your brother, and word has spread through the palace that you’ve given the Golden Prince a precious few more hours of life by taking him to the sea, so that when you come to the gate, the guards let you leave and you thank them, silently, with silver pressed to their fingers. 

But you carry the mermaid’s coin in your hand, under your glove, as you leave the palace and head into the city. 

~!~

People look at you curiously from the corners of their eyes as you pass; too pale, too sharp, too lithe to be any one of them. But they don’t trouble you as you head for the docks. You leave silver in your wake to anyone who helps you, and you hope you’re doing this right.

By the time you reach the docks, you’re not sure. You only brought seven of them, after all, and you only have one left.

_ Seven of silver and a drowned man’s soul. _ You mutter to yourself.  _ Silver and salt and a night black as coal.  _ The sun’s already down below the horizon, and while not black as coal, the New Moon rising means the twilight is velvety dark already. You turn the last coin in your fingers and gulp as you prowl the docks.

It’s raucous on the docks, and yet, singing sailors fall silent as you approach, making three-fingered signs you don’t recognize. You feel like your head’s going to explode, your tongue shrivelled into leather, as you hold up the coin, and unglove your hand to show the mermaid’s coin besides. “Please.” You say.

They stare like hawks, grim-faced, looking among themselves. You clear your throat. “I need passage to just beyond the reef. I don’t need someone to take me there, I just need a boat.”

“You’re making a wish.” One says. He holds out his hand for the coin, somberly, like he’s doing so out of pity. “A wish for a lover.”

“I...” You stop. “Yes.” You answer, with conviction you don’t have, and hand it over.

The sailor’s companions watch you as he holds up the coin and rears his arm back, and throws it as far as he can into the water. You stare, dumbfounded, and then enraged, but he stops you with a look.

“Silver and salt and a night black as coal. I know what you’re looking for.” He says, gruffly, and leads you to the very edge of the dock.

For a moment you’re afraid he’s going to push you into the water. It’s black as ink, now; the stars only barely light the waves like this. But he stops before the edge of the dock and gestures to a rope, and you see the line is connected to a narrow canoe, painted bright red. Outriggers steady the boat against the waves, like the legs of an insect, or wings.

He lowers a gangplank for you, and shakes his head as he passes your side, heading back to his companions. You can see oars folded in the canoe itself, and you take a breath like you’re about to jump into deep water before you walk down the gangplank- shaky, unused to the movement of waves, and you don’t feel safe even when you’re finally on the boat.

Less so when you use an oar to unhook its moorings. The rope trails into the black water, slapping against the side of the hull. You look forward, to where you know the reef ends.

You paddle forward into that blackness, with only the stars overhead and the city behind you for light, not even a lantern at the prow like the fishermen use. Every time the water makes the boat bob, you imagine you’re going to capsize; it’s not hard to imagine every cresting wave is a creature from the abyss, risen to devour you. 

The sea is wide and dark and merciless, and you are one man on a canoe. This feels like a dumber and dumber idea as you go, moreso when you look behind you and even were you on land, the lights of home would look far away. It’s worse out here, on the edge of the reef.

You look up to where the moon should be and find only a smudge and a shadow. The clouds are beginning to gather overhead. You smell salt and rain.

It’s dark and still, but for the waves on the hull. You recite, feeling like a fool.

“Seven of silver and a drowned man’s soul.” You remove your glove. “Silver and salt and a night black as coal.”

Your skin is pale, but even in the eerie, wind-tossed darkness, the mermaid’s coin looks paler, like a hole in the world in your palm. You hold it over your head in both hands, as if presenting it to an audience you can’t see. You feel like there are eyes on you all the same.

“A drowned man’s soul,” You say, “And a living man’s wish: I wish for Jake English, the Golden Prince, to survive the poison. I know the price, you who rules the waves, and I give it.”

You snap the coin in half. Five white shards, like little birds, leap from the fracture and into the waves. You drop the halves into the water and watch them sink.

You realize you’re sweating despite the cold. The world is silent and still, but for the wind that musses your hair.

There’s nothing else for you here, you think, as you start trying to turn the boat back towards land. But it’s then that you realize, you can’t  _ see _ land from here. Not anymore.

You feel another chill go up your spine, like when Jake was telling you to make a wish. The clouds are gathering overhead. The wind is picking up, a prickling smell on it, and you hear it then. Thunder, far off in the distance. Then, closer; and you even see the waves illuminated for a moment by the lightning. You could swear shapes swirl around your canoe in the brief moment of light, just under the surface.

And you won’t be able to out-row a storm.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am _on fire._ Which is hilarious, considering all the water.
> 
> Thalassophobia and emetophobia warnings continue to apply here.

Salt stings your lips, your eyes, your very breath. The thunder rolls closer and closer, and you still don’t see any sign of light beyond the cracks of lightning overhead. You may as well be rowing in a void, until the lightning flashes and the world is thrown in stark relief, like a painting in ink and nightmares.

Your oar thunks against something you don’t want to think about. It feels slick and organic, and then it’s gone.

“Fuck,” You growl, trying to tear through the water with the oar, but it feels like for every stroke you row, you’re pulled further out to sea, pulled closer to the storm. 

The oar grinds against something fleshy again, and you could swear you feel scales. “Fuck!”

You think of Jake, lying in the bloodstained pillows; you think of the Queen Jade, the Golden Queen, dead from a gulp of poisoned wine; and you think, you laid your hopes in a piece of sea trash and a handful of silver, and now you’re going to  _ die  _ for it.

You’ve never been one to shy from the thought of your own death. When things go wrong, your first thought is that you  _ should _ be dead, and you may as well accept it. This is different.

Something about the wilder air out here, the motions of the boat, fills you with a kind of desperate terror. The rumble of thunder turns into a  _ boom _ , louder than cannonfire, and every looming shadow is a monster’s jaws. Your arms burn with the effort of rowing and the waves are cresting higher; sometimes you can’t even reach the water with the oar blades, and every harrowing second you spend at the crest of a wave makes your heart thud so hard it could burst, makes it feel like it’s thudding against the backs of your teeth.

You grit your teeth of course. You squint through the sea spray and try to steer. How did the storm roll in so fast? You should have felt the wind- or maybe you did, and maybe you didn’t care, too caught up in wanting to save Jake with a fucking wish.

Something bumps the side of your boat. You look in the water and see nothing. It bumps again, harder; the boat lurches sickeningly, so far forward you can look down at the water and you could swear you see a ring of white teeth, a gaping maw _. _

You scream, skywards, anguish and fury and despair.

The boat crashes into the water again, tilted too far; you try to lean back to no avail and hit the water before the boat does, and then the boat goes over  _ you _ . Your head thuds against the stern, hard; your mouth fills with water, your eyes and nose follow.

_ You’re going to die. _

The impact makes you black out for a precious few seconds before you remember where you are, what situation you’re in. Is this the magic at work? You’ve never heard of a storm being conjured by a wish. More likely you were stupid, and you didn’t notice the coming clouds; you should have known from the taste of the wind, living so close to the sea all your life. You should have known. 

_ You should have known. _

Your head pounds with the crashing waves. You fight the swirling currents and break the surface, gasping for every breath, grasping at the outrigger like it will save you. The boat is upended and there’s no way to turn it back over while you’re in deep water like this, not any way you know.

The lightning flashes again and you could  _ swear _ something is coming for you, blacker than the surrounding water, impossibly fast. Fins break the waves, either a colony of gleaming black bodies or the segments of something monstrous. Whatever it is, it’s circling you, toying with you, waiting for some signal you don’t understand while you kick in the water to try and keep your head up.

As the lightning fades, the rain pours harder and the waves nearly tear your hands from the boat. You would scream again if it didn’t run the risk of filling your lungs with more seawater. You feel something hot on your face, and you’re not sure if you’re imagining it for the rain, or if you’re really crying. You haven’t cried since you were a boy. You can’t cry now, can you?

You feel more than see the wave coming up behind you, but there’s nothing to be done about it, is there? 

You scream to the heavens, one last time, before you and your boat are submerged. You hardly even fight the buffeting waves anymore, though you feel yourself convulsing with the effort of holding your breath. When you open your eyes, there’s nothing but the blackness of water, blurred shadows whenever the lightning flashes. It sounds distant now, all you hear is water and your own heartbeat.

That’s when you see it, looming out of the dark below. At first you think, maybe you weren’t as far out to sea as you thought. Maybe you could follow that line of coral, that must be what it be, to somewhere safe before your lungs give out. A small chance, a hope borne of your dying moments. Is this how Jake felt?

Then the line moves, darts out of your sight. You realize there’s nothing but water below. You can’t see the sea floor.

You’re face to face with it then. Teeth like swords and eyes like mirrors, a halo of violet light. It glows, whatever it is, just enough for you to see your pale face reflected in its glassy eyes.

You don’t have the breath to scream but you scream anyway when you feel it wrap around you, squeezing tight, icy cold; this deepdwelling terror, whatever it is, like some kind of serpent. You feel a claw at your neck and you think, it’s going to slit your throat open and end it, and then it’s going to eat you.

Water rushes into your mouth. You convulse, trying to free yourself from its grip, but you feel it dragging you deeper, far beyond light or hope. You can’t see, you can’t hear, no person was ever meant to plunge this deep beneath the waves.

The taste of saltwater mingles with bile. You black out.

...

You dream.

Maybe it’s your dying dream. It’s beautiful enough to be. You find yourself at the bottom of the sea, the only light coming from the glowing coral all around you. It reminds you of moonstone and rose quartz and twists of muscle or wood. Fish dart between fanlike stone and swirling anemone.

You swim in the dream. Your dancer’s silks are gone, replaced with fins like colored glass. You dart among the coral arches like the fish do, graceful as you are quick. Nothing can hurt you here. But you can’t go home like this.

You don’t know how long it is until you wake. 

You’re honestly surprised that you wake at all. Sunlight, bright as the night was dark, stabs into your eyelids. You groan and cover your face with your arm, and yet the dark brings up too much memory for you to stay in it. Teeth like knives and eyes like mirrors.

When you turn over, you feel water and sand under your cheek. You open your eyes just barely, squinting through tears and the salt that’s dried on your eyelashes. It hurts to look at  _ anything _ , it’s so  _ bright. _

You relish that brightness, though. You relish the warmth on your skin, the sound of surf crashing against the shore. You feel safe here, though rationally, you’re the farthest thing from safe if you’ve washed up on some unknown beach.

You hear voices. Distant, shouting voices. You hear feet coming down stone, closer, now crunching on sand. You feel hands turning you over, shaking you by the shoulders. You make out a voice.

“...ucking-  _ Dirk! _ ”

Your eyes snap open. Dave’s eyes, red as blood; the whites of them are veined through from crying, and you know you’re in trouble because he never takes off his visor in the day. He’s shaking you, shouting at you. “Stay awake you fucking piece of  _ garbage _ ! Rose, get the royal physician and a stretcher, we need this idiot in the infirmary  _ yesterday!” _

You see Rose from the corner of your eye. She doesn’t even quip, her paint-blackened mouth a tight, severe line as she rushes back up the steps. You realize where you are. You’re on the beach by the palace, at the base of the cliffs.

You’re home.

“Don’t speak.” Dave snaps. He pats your face, your waterlogged clothes, looking for injuries. “Or do. If you need to throw up, throw up  _ now _ .”

That’s about when the nausea catches up with you. You can’t even ask him to get out of the way before you projectile vomit saltwater all over his shirt. He lets you go and you roll over, hacking up your insides like your life depends on it. In all honesty, if he’s right, it probably does. You’d reach into your throat and stick two fingers into it to make it easier if you had to. You’re shaking by the time you’re done.

Rose comes back with the physician and a couple more guards. They put you on the stretcher and carry you carefully up the marble steps. You feel the creep of a memory or a nightmare in the back of your head when you go through the ballroom, empty now. You remember where the Golden Queen lay and turn your face away from it.

Instead you look at Dave. He looks grim and serious, moreso than you’ve ever seen him, and he’s talking a mile a minute to the palace physician. “Don’t know what he was fucking doing out there, do I look like the palace Seer to you? Yes I know she’s my sister, shut up, she’s the one who somehow found Dirk in a dream or a vision or some shit like that, it doesn’t matter, just  _ take care of him. _ ”

“What happened?” You ask, or try to; the words are muffled by your gagging.

“Let it out.” Dave grumbles, reaching down to turn your face so you don’t choke. You cough, and something clatters onto the floor, with a sound like a piece of chalk. Rose helpfully picks it up, and promptly narrows her eyes.

“He was making a wish.” She says, as she holds up what she’s found. You can’t see it, but she marches to Dave and whispers something to him. Dave stops the retinue with a raised hand and looks at you.

“What’s happening?” You ask again. You’re already halfway to the infirmary, but you try to sit up on the stretcher anyway. Your legs feel like lead and jelly, somehow at the same time. “What is that thing?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Dave says. “It’s a fucking stupid superstition and you probably just got it in your mouth when you were washing up on shore.”

“No, Dave.” Rose grips him by the shoulder, so hard you wonder what will bruise first, her fingers or his arm. He tears himself away from her and she shakes her head. “No, this is old magic. This is  _ real _ .”

“Like Hell it is, I almost lost him because of that shit!” He laughs, hysterical and humorless, hurt.

You swing yourself off the stretcher and nearly collapse. But you push on, glaring at the two of them. “Will someone.” You say, “Please  _ fucking  _ tell me what’s going on!”

They look at each other. Your younger siblings, squabbling and hiding things from you like parents you’ve never had, and you ache for them. But wordless understanding passes between them, like it always has, like when you were young.

Dave turns his face away. “Get back on the stretcher.” He says. “I’ll walk ahead and call the prince.”

The prince.  _ Jake. _

“How is he?” You’re afraid to ask.

“Alive, because of you.” Rose says. She presses what she’s found into your hand as the guards help you back on the stretcher, and looks into your eyes. 

It’s about the size of the first joint of your thumb, but it’s unmistakable. You’ve coughed up a mermaid’s coin.

Your hand trembles. “That makes no fucking sense.” You say. “This is crazy, I did something dumb and nearly died; that doesn’t mean it was  _ magic _ .”

“I’m sorry, Dirk, but you’re an idiot.” She looks furious, in that glacial way she gets. “Seven of silver and a drowned man’s soul, do you know that it’s not the sea coin that brings it?”

She doesn’t even have to say it before it sinks in, and she says it anyway, like a death sentence, to the rest of them gathered. Her voice is like crushed glass, the Seer of the palace, not your sister. “He belongs to the sea, now. We can’t keep him here. Hurry.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The other important player finally makes his appearance. Thalassophobia continues to be a running theme.
> 
> EDIT September 30, 2017:  
> Made a slight mistake near the end of the chapter with the mermaid's coin. Fixed it now.

Jake, Dave, and the royal physician are waiting for you in the infirmary when the doors finally open. You had to be forced back onto the stretcher twice, the movement too slow for your liking but Rose deciding you weren’t ready to walk just yet, despite your insistence to the contrary. When they carry you onto a bed and you try to stand again, it’s only Jake’s insistence that keeps you down.

“I’m  _ fine _ ,” You keep saying, as you’re prodded and examined like an animal. You bare your teeth much like one. The mermaid’s coin is still wet with spit in your palm, and you tighten your hold on it to steady yourself.

“You nearly drowned.” The royal physician says. “And you may drown yet if there’s any water left in your lungs.”

You force yourself not to show her the coin. Rose looks at you from over the physician’s shoulder, and Dave won’t meet your eye. It’s like he wants to forget you’re there, you think, as he exchanges sharp words with one of the other guards.

Jake looks paler than he should, but you can see the life returned to his eyes, the color returned to his lips. You didn’t hear if they’d found the antidote to the poison, but they must have. You don’t know if your magic has anything to do with it, and Jake can’t get a word in edgewise with the royal physician in the way; he could, as the Golden Prince, as an authority in the palace, but you know he won’t.

You wish he’d talk to you despite. But then, you’re a little apprehensive about wishing right now, too. It’s only when the royal physician finishes checking you over that Jake finally steps up, and no one dares interrupt the Golden Prince after all.

“Can you please leave us, just for a while? If it’s not too much trouble.” He pleads, soft-spoken way like does when he wants something but isn’t sure if he should be asking for it. There’s more hardness to it now, a certain restraint, a certain brittleness. He smiles. “Or I could wait outside. I should probably be resting myself.”

The physician looks awkward, thinking about it, and you know Jake has enough practice at this to know what choice- or lack thereof- he’s given her. She bites her lower lip, and nods wordlessly, gesturing for the others to leave. “Please lie down, your Highness.” She offers, and then leaves as well.

Jake’s footfalls are so light you’d think he didn’t want them to be heard, but the way he walks towards you, he’s shaking with things unsaid. Your own throat is dry with it, and you feel like the moment before the first drumbeat of your performances, hanging in wait.

Or, maybe more aptly, the moment before blades are drawn.

Jake, bless him; he speaks first.

“You died out there, didn’t you.” His voice cracks at the edges, and his hands curl into fists. “You bloody  _ died _ out there. I’m- speechless, that you’ve done this for me, I didn’t really think you would. I had- not hoped- I would never hope for you to do something like this, but you  _ did _ , and I’m-”

“Jake,” You whisper, placatingly.

He stiffens, and you see the well of tears on his lashes. “I’m  _ sorry. _ ”

And he laughs; bubbling, rising, horrible laughter, like spiderweb fractures spreading across a mirror, or the glassy surface of a frozen lake. You’ve never seen the look on his face before, heard this before, and you don’t think you ever want to again. You hate yourself for being the cause.

“Jake,” You say again, and he sniffs, and holds up his hand, wiping his tears.

“No, you can’t say anything to fix this. I. I should be thanking you, that you’ve done this, that you would give so much for me.” When he smiles, he looks like he’s falling apart again, and for a moment you’re afraid he’ll die at your side, that the poison hasn’t really left him. He takes your hand, thumbs across the pale, jutting bumps of your knuckles.

You don’t really know what you’ve given up, but you can guess from the way he weeps, from the way Rose looked at you like you’ve been exiled.

For all you know, you will be.  _ He belongs to the sea. _ You don’t think you’ll be lucky enough to escape drowning a second time.

“Can I ask you a favor?”

You’re already dead. What do you have to lose now? He looks up at you, and you wipe the tears from his eyes. You feel like- you don’t know how you feel, in this moment, as you hold his face in your hands. Like you did when you unmoored the canoe. Like you did when you asked the sea for a wish. Like that, but smaller, aching and still, like the world won’t hear you if you speak quietly enough. Like the world is holding its breath, just for you.

You feel his breath on your lips first, and then skin. You feel him say something, but it’s lost in your mouth. His lips tremble.

Before you can pull away, he draws his arms around your shoulders and kisses you for real. You’ve never been kissed like  _ that. _ You feel his hands in your hair, his tongue against your teeth, his teeth digging into your lip. It’s uncomfortable and desperate and wordlessly sad, and you never want it to end.

But it does, because you end it, because you know it will be worse for you if you don’t.

“Remember me.” You say. “That’s the only favor I can ask from you. Remember me.”

“Gods named and nameless take me before I forget you, you mad, beautiful creature.” He says, as he kisses you again. You’re all too aware of every second between every breath, every graze of his lips against yours. It doesn’t go deeper than that. It doesn’t feel like it should, though you know there’s nothing stopping you.

You still taste something bitter and medicinal on his breath. They must have found the antidote after all.

~!~

You remember that taste, hours later, when you turn your face look at him standing on the beach. You’re setting out at the same time you did yesterday, only the sky is purplish-blue this evening rather than bright, searing red. The stars are beginning to come out.

This time, you’re setting out from the base of the cliff, at the beach. You keep the mermaid’s coin you spat up in hand, and you’re tempted to crush it but it’s too small for you to get a grip on. You don’t think wishing on it will do you any good, anyway; it’s a seashell, nothing more.

Dave checks the flat-bottomed little boat you’re in one last time. He taps for leaks in the hull, and ties knots on the outriggers in configurations you don’t understand. He still refuses to look at you, but there’s something tender in the way he lays a box of rations into the boat itself. Good for three days, if you last that long in monsoon season.

Rose, standing before you in her heavy, golden robes, anoints your face with some kind of white, oily cream from a little clay pot. She whispers under her breath and the words are carried away on the wind, but you catch snatches of it all; she’s praying the sea will have you and then freely give you back, that you won’t go mad from the sun in the few days your rations will last.

When she’s done and you’re ushered onto the boat, one of Rose’s priests and one of Dave’s guards push it into the water. You’re only a few meters from shore when Jake cries out at last, a sharp wail like he’s been shot.

For a moment you think the assassin’s been given another chance, but you hear churning water and then more voices, and when you look back as the waves pull you steadily away, he’s standing knee-deep in the surf and calling for you like a child.

“Don’t you dare die out there!” He shouts for you, before he goes still, listening for an answer. You have none. You’ve lost any words you could give him when you set foot on the boat.

It’s not long before you can’t see him anymore, in the dark, still water. You’re blessed that they set you out at this hour, so you won’t burn, pale as you are, but that won’t save you come sunrise. Soon you can’t see the palace on the cliff, and it’s not long after that- too soon, you think- that you can’t see the lights of home at all.

The stars shine down on you in silence. The waves slap the boat.

You hurl the mermaid’s coin as far as you can into the emptiness, and in a fit of madness you almost throw yourself overboard to end it before it can get any worse. It’s when you look over the side of the boat that you stop, because you see it again.

Teeth like swords and eyes like mirrors, black as moonless nights and dreamless sleep. You back away from the edge of the boat and turn your face to the general direction of what you  _ think _ is home, but your head is spinning, your throat is tight with terror. You hear water sliding off something smooth and you know it’s rising, and then it bumps the edge of the boat.

You look.

It’s like an eel, or a snake, but impossibly huge. Fins frame a face that should be bestial, but it’s eerily intelligent, the way it looks at you. You feel the blood drain from your lips as it dips its head closer, and the way its muscles move under the smooth, oil-dark scales is just  _ wrong _ .

In the back of your mind, you think of Jake’s stories, and you realize you’re living in one when it speaks.

“You made your wish last night.” It says, flatly. It’s a human voice, but it warbles weirdly, like bubbles when your head is submerged. Siren-like, beautiful. Fundamentally disturbing. 

“I did.” You answer, because you have to answer, compelled.

“Then this is the price you pay.” Again, no intonation but the bubbles in its voice. You don’t know what to say, if it’s a question or a statement.

It rears back and you think it’s going to tear into the boat, but it shrinks back into the water instead. You think, it’s going to tear through the boat from below, but for a long, breathless handful of minutes, there’s nothing.

You hear a light thump to the hull again, and you think, this is it, this is where I fucking die.

Instead, a hand rises from the water, grey, taloned, terrifying. It’s human and yet not quite, fins stretching between the fingers. Another comes up beside it, and then arms, and then a head. The eyes open, yellowy in the gloom. Something like horns curve back from a flat, sharp face, again, too close to human but put together all wrong.

“You’re the price for a wish, Dirk Strider.” The same voice as the serpent. You blink.

“Who are you?” You resist asking,  _ what _ are you. The creature smiles with a mouth too wide and full of too many teeth. You recoil as they rear out of the water to reveal shoulders, chest, hips, all scaled and dark, sooty grey, muscles too taut, joints too loose. But there’s no escaping in the little boat, and they’re almost beautiful after all this time alone with nothing but thoughts and monsters. “How do you know my name?”

“I am Eridan Ampora.” He says. The fins framing his face undulate like a pair of fans. “I am the Prince of Dragons, Prince of the Sea. My father sent you back to shore with a message last night, that little bauble you just threw overboard.”

“The coin?” You feel your fingers unfurl. The coin seems all the more sinister all of a sudden, like a brand burned into your palm where it lay.

“ _ Payment _ for a soul.” Says Eridan, haughty and strange. “And your soul is mine.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thalassophobia considerably reduced. This is kind of a breather chapter, actually.
> 
> EDIT: October 1, 2017  
> Added an extra detail to the magic that allows Dirk to breathe underwater.

There’s a heartbeat that passes between the realization of what he just said and your reaction to it: You drowned out there, your soul belongs to the sea. Your soul belongs to  _ Eridan _ .

You’re reeling, and there’s no way to come back from it. You watch as if slightly to the left of your own body, as Eridan stands in the boat with all the ease of someone rising out of a chair, and the boat’s movements don’t tip him even a little bit.

“You won’t be needing this.” He says, picking up your cache of rations.Before you can protest, he throws them overboard with a splash.

You snap out of your trance. “ _ What are you doing? _ ”

“Hm?” He looks at you like he didn’t hear you, but his pupils narrow into slits in the luminous yellows. He looks to the rations at the same time you do, the waves already carrying them far away. “I’m making the boat lighter. It’ll be easier this way.”

“Easier to  _ what, _ ” Your voice rasps like a death rattle. “To tip it over and drown me?”

“Nonsense.” He waves you off. His fins wave again, and filaments undulate in the violet slits along his neck. Gills, you realize, and you shudder as he turns around and you see a long, sail-like fin down his spine. It ripples, and he turns his head to smile sharply at you. “Easier to carry, of course.”

He bends down and undoes a knot of rope. You’d only distantly wondered what Dave was doing with it; now Eridan follows the lines in a way that shouldn’t be half as mesmerizing as it is. He picks at it with his long, pointed claws that you  _ think _ should slice right through the twine but never do. They barely even fray the fiber.

“It’s rude to stare.” He says. 

You frown. “I think I’m entitled to be less than polite after all the shit I’ve been through.” And he laughs, bubbling-bright as champagne on your tongue. At least until his voice darkens, when he turns towards you, brandishing the rope in his hand like a live snake.

“You went out to a storm to make a wish, and not only did we grant your wish, we  _ saved _ your sorry ass. You should be kissing my toes for all the trouble we’ve gone through for you.” He growls, right in your face.

But you hold your ground. “I don’t see why I should be grateful to be saved from fucking drowning,” You begin, and you look him in his gleaming eyes. “If I’m just going to be drowned anyway.”

He pauses. You think maybe there’s something incredulous in his posture, in the set of his shoulders, like he’s amazed you dared. Or he’s furious. You would prefer the previous option.

Eridan doesn’t answer you, merely winds the rope he’s undone around his wrist and then leaps overboard. You still yourself from the  _ very _ tempting urge to look over and see what he’s doing, but you know what you’ll find when you see the line going tight, loops spilling into the water until there’s no slack at all.

You feel yourself bump against the stern, as the boat begins to move. It’s remarkably fast, faster than you would have gotten it by rowing on your own. It skips across the water as Eridan pulls, and you huddle in on yourself in the corner as you wonder where the Hell he’s taking you. You want to ask. He wouldn’t hear you from underwater though, would he?

Or maybe he would. He heard your wish, after all, and quite possibly your scream.

The silence is deafening. You watch the stars wheel overhead, as the night wears on. You have a hard time sleeping on most nights, but out here, on the water, knowing you’re being pulled somewhere far from everything you’ve ever known by a creature from a story; well, that makes it downright impossible.

Still, it feels like you’ve dozed a little, somehow, when you hear a thunk and a scrape on the bow and wake up entirely. There’s a certain warmth in the air, and a smell you’re not familiar with. You sit up and look.

Eridan sits smugly on the prow, in person-shape. He’s nude still, and looks like a smudge of ink or soot against the brightness of your new surroundings. All around you are pillars of red and pink coral, rising out of the water dizzyingly high. Eridan apparently ran your little boat aground on a sandbar, at the entrance to a coral cave.

It yawns open in front of you like some kind of mouth, or perhaps a gateway. Strange fronds line the inner walls, glowing with algae, and water cascades down the walls, keeping the whole thing alive. You don’t know how the water gets up there. It’s hard to tell if dragons use magic that impressive, or simple plumbing. It’s hard to tell what’s a dream or not tonight.

“What do you think?” Eridan preens as you look around, arms crossed over his chest, smile sharp as a blade. You can’t see any sign of land beyond the pillars, and the air just beyond them has a strange, shimmering quality that blurs even the stars. To the East, you can see the sun beginning to rise, green as sandy shallows in the summer.

“It’s impressive, I have to admit.” You say. “A little ostentatious, though. How does the water get to the peaks of these towers?”

“That’s for me to know and you to wonder.” He grins even wider. “Now get up, I want to get us both ready.”

You blink. “For what?  _ With  _ what?” You can’t imagine you need a bath yet, though your skin itches with salt spray and Rose’s ointment, your hair sticky with dried sweat.

“To meet the rest of the court, of course.” He takes your hand and  _ yanks _ you forward, but you dig in your heels and swear. Into the cave? Into the  _ water? _

“You realize I’ll drown, right?” You’re wary of even stepping off the boat, as if the sandbar will crumble under your feet as soon as you try, though Eridan stands on it just fine. “Going down there, I don’t think so. Whoever you want me to meet, they can come up here.”

He scoffs and tugs you harder, and he’s deceptively strong for someone so slim. You should know this, of course, considering he took you across the sea in a single night. You know the stories of the Dragon’s Gate, ships sailing into a curtain of mist and finding the towers on the other side, and you know how far you are from home if you’re there.

They were Jake’s favorite when you were young. It leaves a stony lump in the back of your throat to think about it, and apparently makes you unaware enough that Eridan can come closer and simply heave you into his arms like a new bride. You snarl at him, but he tightens his grip like he’s going to snap your ribs until you calm down, and hops out of the boat.

You look forlornly at it as he steps into the cave, and he’s already chattering away about how you’ll live below. “Been a long fuckin’ time since I’d taken a human consort, so you’ll have the rooms all to yourself, you lucky thing. Stop fretting or I’ll drop you, and then where would you be? You’ll have everything you need down there, it’s not like you’re a prisoner.”

“I  _ am _ a prisoner,” You grouse, and try to push him away. He holds fast. “If I wasn’t a prisoner, you’d let me walk right out of here.”

“To where? To swim back to the Golden Isles? Or more likely, be eaten by a shark, or drown?” It makes your back tense up, just hearing him say it out loud. It makes you tense up further when you hear sloshing, and you realize he’s beginning to wade.

“Fuck, let me go, you  _ idiot _ ,” You’re not panicking, surprisingly, but you’re getting pissed. “I may as well fucking  _ try _ , because at least I’ll have an easier time of it than drowning  _ here and now _ .”

He laughs again, like you’ve told him a joke. He’s already into the water up to his waist. “Calm down, you’ll see.” He says. You still hold your breath when at the edge of the shallows, he plunges.

The water is pale blue, almost lavender from the light of the coral and the coral itself. You feel the pressure rising as he descends, watch bubbles drift towards the surface that’s getting further and further away. You’re feeling lightheaded. Eridan frowns when you struggle harder, presses something round and cool to the base of your throat.

“ _ Breathe _ , you moron.” He says. It sounds remarkably clear for being underwater. When you don’t do as instructed- and Hell, you don’t know what you’re doing by that, but you can’t make your throat unclench even when he jabs you. Your lungs burn. Your eyesight begins to waver. You feel your heart about to burst.

Eridan makes a sound suspiciously like a sigh and takes a turn in the tunnels, and breaks the surface in an air pocket.

You breathe in, too hard, and cough madly. Before you can protest, he dunks your head back under the water.

You’re horrified when you feel the water rushing in where you inhale, you struggle and cough, thrashing in his grip. He doesn’t relent, and it takes you a moment to realize why.

You can breathe just fine. It’s only when you stop thrashing that he lets you go. You raise your head from the water and cough anyway, bewildered, your hair flopping around your face. Eridan crosses his arms again.

“There, now. You’ll only be able to breathe the water in the Dragon’s Gate.” He said. “Beyond the cave’s mouth, you’ll drown, so don’t get any ideas about swimming back.”

You feel something in yourself crack at the very thought, something in the back of your mind, splintering under the weight of his implication. You push it aside. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Doesn’t matter. You should have trusted me anyway. I figured you’d understood enough of your sailors’ stories to know.” He scoffed. “You knew about the wish. I suppose I shouldn’t have presumed. Now come along.” He takes you by the wrist this time as he dives, and your face plunging into the water still comes with an initial horror when the water fills your throat. But you breathe as easily as you do on the balconies of the palace, aside from a certain cold pressure in your chest.

You don’t want to think about it too hard. Instead you look around.

You realize you’re not alone. There are other creatures like Eridan, darting among the arches of coral. Eridan, you realize, is definitely a prince among them, with how they stop and stare and bow deferentially when he passes with you in tow. Some of them glare at you. 

You would glare back if you weren’t so confused.

“Try speaking.” Says Eridan. “Or don’t, I don’t particularly care. But if you’re going to be a dead fish while I keep you, I may as well eat you now.”

You don’t know if he’s kidding, but it’s still enough to prompt you to ask, “That would be completely fucking pointless, wouldn’t it?”

He laughs. The sound is magnified in these strange halls. “Indeed.” He says, before he begins to rise again. You break the surface a second time and find yourself in another air bubble. Glass- what looks remarkably like it, at least- gives you a view into the outside world.

It’s a Hell of a world. You’re close enough to the surface that you can see the sun rising through the water, but there’s still a whole lot of water between you and there, reminding you of how trapped you are. You can see fish darting around outside the windows, colorful, tropical creatures similar and yet not to the ones back home.

Eridan urges you onto the dry portion, and you find yourself limply dragging yourself onto the blood red tile. There’s a kingdom’s fortune in red coral in this room alone.

“Your rooms.” He says, easily walking out of the water where you’re still finding your legs again. He drags you up by the arm and your knees shake. “Now come on, I want you dressed and pretty for when I introduce you.”

You can’t take it anymore. You rear your arm back as far as you can and punch him in the face.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully y'all find this interesting, because it was a challenge to write. The imagery is fun, at least.

His pretty face doesn’t break under your hand, and you thank your lucky stars for that because he might have actually eaten you if it had. You hear him make a noise of pain all the same, though; pain and surprise and some kind of rage. You yourself are livid.

He staggers a moment, and touches the spot where you’d punched him. There’s already a purpling bruise beginning to form, and he looks at you in a way that’s more bewildered and hurt than truly angry.

“No.” You say, still poised and ready for a fight. “Fuck that shit. I’m not doing any more getting yanked around in magical water like a fucking  _ pet _ until someone explains to me what the fuck is going on, because I’ve just about had it up to  _ here  _ with your attitude, and I’d  _ really  _ fucking like to get up to speed before anything else.”

His expression darkens, and again the thought comes; if you were anyone else, you might waver. You don’t, though, because you’ve got so much shit going on in your head that the tension alone is keeping your trembling legs up. But somehow, and you least expected it, the look on his face smooths over. He straightens his back, nose in the air.

“I’m not going to strike back, if only because I want you suitable for presentation later. If you ever do that again, I’ll have a  _ some _ form of punishment.” He says. His lips are press into a thin line. “If nothing else, I’ll take away the stone that lets you breathe the water here and leave you to think about it in this room for a while. The novelty of having someone  _ dare _ raise a hand to me wears off fast.”

“Sure.” You say. Your mouth feels dry at the thought of being  _ trapped _ here, but you bear it, and resist the urge to touch the little charm he’s put around your neck like a collar and throw it at him. You motion with your fist for him to get on with it.

“I suppose you’ll do better to conduct yourself if you know what’s expected of you.” You still watch him, warily, as he makes his way to a chest at the foot of what you’re surprised to recognize as a bed, the frame made of the remains of a boat much like yours. 

You don’t want to think too hard about whatever must have happened to the previous owner of that boat. You don’t get much of a chance to think about it, anyway; Eridan flips open the chest and draws out something silky and sheer, shakes his head, and puts it back. There are compartments beside the main portion of the chest, filled with all kinds of trinkets and accoutrements that you find yourself eerily familiar with.

Maybe life under the sea isn’t going to be as different from life on land as you thought. Especially when Eridan finally finishes rummaging and finds you something he’s satisfied with. It flutters easily when he turns around to show it to you, panels of something very like silk but like no silk you’ve ever seen in your life.

“This is supposed to be an explanation?” You ask, and lift up a sleeve. It feels like a breeze against your skin, cool and weightless.

“No, this is what you’ll be wearing when I introduce you. Honestly, you’re simpler than I thought, aren’t you?” He scoffs, and it makes you bristle, but you take the costume from his hands and hold it up. You’re going to be practically naked in it. But then- and you feel a little dumb for thinking that- Eridan has been naked this entire time. Maybe it’s a cultural thing.

Jake would have been mortified.

Eridan snaps his fingers in front of your face. “Did you drink seawater before I got to you? Get out of those awful, heavy things and make yourself presentable.” He presses baubles into your hands, rings, bangles, bells. Bits of beads for your hair, precious stones. “You’ll be introduced to the court as my newest consort, and you’ll be very polite about it, too, or you’ll probably be offed for being ungrateful by someone who wants to get closer to the throne, or worse. I’m considering leaving you mute for it, but no, they’ll be asking questions...” 

On he goes, as if you’re not there. He’s fussy about it all, too, getting you naked, his hands cold and slick even now that they’re dry as he turns you around and decorates you like a mannequin and you keep pushing him away but he doesn’t seem to hear. You mutter and swear breath and snatch your hands out of his more than once. All the while he explains.

You hold onto what he’s saying only barely, at least where he doesn’t go on tangents about how  _ hard _ it was, finding you at all, how lovely you will be if you just listen to him, how you’ll do so much better than the other consorts have before you. You listen and it makes your skin crawl. But you know what to expect.

You’ll be presented to a court of dragons as Eridan’s newest consort, you’d gotten that much. He mentions you’ll need to do a little schmoozing. Great. No big deal. He mentions you’ll have to show them you’re worth more than a pretty face.

You didn’t have time to prepare for  _ that.  _ It should be just like when you first danced for the Golden Court, except with more experience under your belt- and more teeth around you to make up for it.

But you’ll do fine. Better than fine.

“Much better.” He purrs, pleased with himself, as he looks you up and down when you’re finally done. The silks flutter around you with every movement, with every  _ breath _ , like wisps of vapor. “Do try to get your legs under you faster than you did when we first came up here.”

There’s a mirror you can see yourself in, a full-length thing dredged from some shipwreck or other; water-damaged wood, already being reclaimed by sea flora, framing a panel of silvered glass with spots of tarnish at the edges. You toss a bit of hair out of your face and it clinks with bits of black and gold pearl, and you think the orange-gold silks look less like vapor and more like flame, flickering, like you’re burning even underwater. Dancer’s silks, even if more risque than you’ve ever worn in the palace. Eridan knows what he’s about.

He comes up behind you, hands on your shoulders that you want to whip away from, cold through the gauzy fabric. “I’ll have someone come and get you.” He says, beaming proudly. “It’s been a long,  _ long _ time since a human was in Dragon’s Gate.”

The weight at your throat feels like it’s going to burn a hole through your chest, a reminder that you can’t escape. You watch him through the mirror as he turns around and dives back into the water, and then you have to stop yourself from hurling the stone after him.

What a mess you’ve gotten yourself into.

You sigh, and instead flop on the mattress. It’s nothing like anything you’ve ever slept on, springy under your weight instead of folding like feathers, surprisingly soft and dry. It’s warm besides, and after the frigid night air and the exhaustion of everything that’s happened in the past couple days, even a chronic insomniac like you can’t resist sleep.

You’ve gotten good at telling how long you’ve been asleep, after all the nights spent snatching only minutes of it for no goddamn reason. You suspect there’s more magic at work, because you fall asleep and  _ stay _ asleep, and you’re surprised when someone comes to wake you, disoriented enough that you don’t immediately remember where you are and what’s going on.

So it’s completely unsurprising when you punch  _ another _ dragon in the face, thinking you’re having a nightmare. 

Not Eridan, at least; voice pitched too high and horns sticking straight up, besides the hook on the end of the left one. She looks deeply offended by the blood trickling down her nose.

“That was very rude.” She says, accentless, with the sharp enunciation one would expect from a diplomat. You chase off the thought  _ do dragons have diplomats _ to apologize but she shakes her head before you can. “I should have expected it. You woke up in a strange place with a strange creature beside you and I should have had the experience to wake you up more carefully.”

She pulls her hand away and smiles. The blood is verdigris green, and you instinctively recoil from the sight. Her expression looks… pitying?

“I have to wonder what our dearest prince has done to make you so wary.” She says, sliding off the bed. She wears the same material you do, swirling like smoke but all in blue; and, you note, she’s wearing a lot more of it. “But it does me no favors to ask. I just rather hope it does nothing to alarm you too much when you are to introduce yourself.”

“Right.” Your voice is a little rough, but not so rough that you must have been asleep for too long. “What time is it?”

“Hm? Midday.” She snaps her fingers. “You are to be introduced to the court in a few minutes. Follow me.”

You’re still disoriented enough, curious enough, that it’s easy to follow her. You feel too passive about it, though; you feel like you should be eyeing every crevice and crack for a weapon, a hiding place, a way to escape. You think of the little boat Eridan brought you in, though, and the thought seems more than a little stupid. 

Evidence to the contrary aside, you’re pretty sure you’re not  _ stupid _ .

It’s the only thing that keeps you from turning around and swimming as hard as you can back the way you came when you’re guided to some kind of atrium. And you recognize it as one easily, with guests milling about and music playing, though eerily magnified by being underwater. The hum of pipes and the thud of drums is magnified down here, thudding in your ribs and curling in your skull. 

The similarities are just enough that everything comes strange and dreamlike to you. You look up and the sun is positioned exactly overhead, sliced into fifths by the pillars surrounding the cavernous room, higher than even the cliffs of home, you’d imagine. Serpentine creatures lazily wind their way through the water, pearlescent black and violet and blue.

What you thought were fins are actually long trails of the ephemeral sea silk, warping the light with every movement. It’s almost difficult to look at, the sheer otherworldliness of it.

One spots you.

The music changes timbre smoothly, but noticeably, and the dragons begin swimming upwards. Their bodies shimmer brighter in the shafts of sunlight closer to the surface, melting and twisting in on themselves until they’re almost human.

The one who led you here puts a hand on your shoulder with a smile. She’s stopped bleeding, at least. “The King of Dragons is at the very top, closest to the sunlight. You will be introduced without the water in the way. Humans always are.”

You don’t know what to say to that. She doesn’t morph into dragon shape when she carries you up, but she swims faster than you do. Eyes gleam from alcoves in the coral, shadowy shapes, more dragons? You can’t be sure as you’re carried up, up, the pressure relenting until you feel lightheaded with it, like being carried up a mountain where the air runs thin and yet you never faint. If anything, it energizes you. 

When you reach the top, there’s a floating raft. The water is mirror-smooth, strangely placid, to the point that the raft only slightly shifts away from you when a couple other dragons dive into the water to carry you onto it.

You expect the sea silk to stick to your skin like cobwebs, but it flares out and dries as soon as you’re on the raft. Huh.

“He’s here.” Eridan, telltale warble in his voice clear as a bell. A murmur rises around you as he continues to speak. “Dirk Strider, from the Golden Isles. The one who made his wish to us after so long.”

You hear slithering. You look up and see a tail, dipping into the water, speckled with silvery-grey scales. You follow the line of it to a tall man lounging in a throne of treasures dredged from the sea, shells and stones and shipwrecked things. The coral around you blooms brightly in the midday sun, casting him even darker against the colorful backdrop.

The King of Dragons. The coral looks almost like a garden, set with precious stones, but none as fine as the oilslick scales of the dragons, and none dark and silver like his, like an incarnation of night. You bow, because what else can you do before a king?

“Dirk Strider.” He says. You’ve never seen a king’s face before, and this one looks grim as death, twin scars marring his face in a diagonal slash across one eye. He scoffs, though you get the sense that it’s practiced. His tail lashes. “There have been many before you. Princesses, warriors, explorers, magicians. What makes you so special?”

There’s a hush around you. It’s to your surprise that you speak, clearly, and without a hint of hesitation. “I’m a dancer, Your Majesty. The finest dancer of an age in the Golden Isles.”

You don’t actually know. But there’s a murmur.

“A dancer, you say?” The King again. He sounds doubtful. “And the finest they have to offer. Hm. I’ve heard  _ that _ claim before. Prove it against one of mine, we’ll see.”

Well, that should have been expected. You feel yourself wilt a little, though only on the inside.

But wounded pride can lend something to your dance. You  _ know _ you’re the best, and you’ll make them see it even against whatever a dragon dancer can bring. Maybe you can use it, in the time you have here.

One dives into the water and then neatly rises onto the raft, twin-horned and jewel eyed. He smiles with a mouth like a trap when you feel the tremor of the raft’s movement.

You raise your arms, silently, put one foot forward, bells on your wrists and ankles. Music thuds around you, echoing in the coral. You imagine it can be heard across the sea.

You let it sink into your bones, pluck at your joints and the twists of your body.

You flick your wrists and the bells tinkle like breaking glass, a signal, a challenge.

“Gladly.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things don't go as expected, neither my writing schedule nor this story.
> 
> Happy Birthday, dualitat! I'm sorry that I couldn't finish this story today, but I'm going to keep writing until I do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested song by my brother, "[Mirage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11S5tcT2Tm0&feature=youtu.be)" by Lindsey Stirling.

You fought a lot back when you were fourteen. You bear some of the scars today, flecks and patches of shimmery-white skin where you were cut or scraped or otherwise pulled in the wrong direction. You haven’t actually fought in a long time, and you don’t remember most of the scars, but you  _ do _ remember what it felt like to fight.

It’s a lot like that, dancing against someone. You both move in time with the beat, both move your bodies to try and own the dance. The main difference is you never lay a hand on each other, and the beat is more than harried breath and shouting onlookers. The onlookers are nearly silent.

You swing your hips in a half circle and the skirts of your costume fly around you like an inferno. You step forward and drop low, back straight, pull away. You spin, raise your hands, stop with a sharp jerk of your hips and shoulders in time with the beat and bring it back like you’re made of the music, like your movements are the beat of the drums and the scream of the strings.

It’s harder than when you dance alone, watching, timing your opponent to own his movements as much as you own yours. The worst part is the ripples, the raft moves with them and you have to make every twitch and sway look intentional, and you’ve never had to dance on a moving surface before.

He smiles at you with his jagged teeth and you’d swear he would laugh if he could get away with it, but his laughter is in his movements, sharp twists and slow undulations that remind you of waves. He dares you to keep up, stepping forward, and you have to will yourself to step to the side instead of step back, where he might guide you into the water.

You sway, the raft bounces; you have catch your balance and very nearly have to grab him but instead you spin with the next two steps and somehow catch yourself. The air is filled with the rattle of something rough and hollow, the beats and claps of drums and hands, the sigh of woodwinds. One, two, three, four, parry, lunge, turn, repeat.

Sweat drips down your face. It should be cold, you think, but you’re beginning to ache with having to keep your balance  _ and _ keep this up.

But it’s not a war of attrition, it’s a  _ show _ . You spy Eridan in the audience, curled lazily into a pile of cushions. You see the dragon girl with the hooked horn, sitting primly on the edge of a stone. You see the Dragon King watching you with his single unmarked eye. You see the crowd. You can impress a crowd.

But what can you do that the dragon dancers can’t? This is  _ their  _ stage, after all.

They can’t fuck up here.  _ You  _ can’t fuck up here.

… 

But you can get  _ close _ .

You’re screaming at yourself for the thought, but you can’t hesitate now. You let yourself be led with your opponent’s sharp jabs; despite every instinct, you step back, towards the water, towards the very edge of the raft. 

And then you bounce on your heels and make it rise out of the water at the opposite edge, use the momentum to bounce forward, land on the balls of your feet. They smile at you, but there’s a sharpness in those jewel-eyes now, as you use the rolling waves against him. You sway with it, but he instinctively rebalances himself.

You can hardly believe it’s working. Even when he follows you now, whirls of golden fabric fluttering around you both; and he does the same thing you do but you’ve finally gotten a toehold on the dance. You get in his way with it, your breath coming ragged but triumphant. You jump with a wave and spin in the air and when the sleeves unfurl from you, you  _ fly _ .

Well, not really. But it’s a good comparison to make.

The King of Dragons raises a single hand, heavy with rings, and the music begins to wind down. You and the other dancer slow. You’re feeling pretty good about yourself.

“The best of the Golden Isles?” The King repeats. Both eyes narrow. You try not to show your spirit dropping into the pit of your gut as the dragon dancer dives back into the water to some unseen corner of the atrium. “Nothing I haven’t seen before. The Golden Isles must be lacking in dancers.”

There’s distant laughter all around you; polite laughter, hidden behind hands and veils and woven fans, but laughter nonetheless. It stings a little, though you keep your face placid as you bow and your eyes trained on your toes as you speak.

“With all due respect, your Majesty, human dancers tend to do better on solid ground. I apologize that the performance was less than to your liking.” More murmurs, and you straighten up, though you don’t meet his eye. You sneak a look at Eridan instead, and you’re not sure how to read the look on  _ his _ face, either.

“Perhaps.” He says, and by some unknown signal, that’s enough for the others. You hear the sound of parting water all around you as the dragons dive back in, your introduction clearly over. It doesn’t seem like you’ve made a very good impression, either. You can’t imagine you’re going to do any better later.

A little voice in the back of your mind tells you you’re just too used to the applause of the Golden King’s court. It’s hard working up from there, isn’t it?

You straighten up and banish the thought to the furthest corners of your mind. The sun brightens the dome of the atrium’s ceiling from where you stand, and all you see is water and the coral pillars beyond the arched “windows”, blurred and stained with algae and salt. You sigh, loudly, and consider finding a stone to break one of the windows and escaping through there, at least until you realize you’re not alone. Eridan is watching you from the edge of the raft.

“Aren’t you going to come down and eat?” He asks, and you almost hear the derisive sniff in his tone even though you know there isn’t one. At the same time, the grumbling in your middle reminds you that you need to eat.

You want to starve yourself just to be contrary. You want nothing to do with this fairytale.

He seems to get the idea, too, because he hauls himself up on the raft and walks towards you. It’s only when he reaches for you that you pull away from him, and you try not to feel a twinge of guilt at the surprised  _ hurt _ on his face.

It’s easier not to feel it when he snarls and grabs for you instead. You hiss as his grip presses into your wrists, and you start pulling away from him harder.

“Don’t be a  _ brat _ .” He says.  _ Whines _ , really. “Don’t  _ sulk _ just because the court didn’t cheer for you. You’re here for  _ me _ , not for them.”

“Is this your way of being comforting?” You don’t fight him, but you don’t make it any easier for him to pull you, either. You dig your heels into the slick wood underfoot. “I’m not sulking because I didn’t get a standing ovation. I’m not  _ sulking _ in the first place. Did you forget that you fucking kidnapped me?”

“I did nothing of the sort.” His eyes narrow. “You made your wish, and this is the price of it.  _ This  _ is what your soul was given for.”

He kisses you. Hard.

It’s not a nice kiss, but you’re too stunned by it to do any more than stand there while he yanks you close and curls a fist in your hair, claws scraping faintly at your scalp. You’re so stunned that you hardly react when he plunges his tongue into your mouth, though internally you recoil from it, too long and too smooth and too  _ cold. _

It’s when he bites you that you come crashing back down into reality. It hurts like a motherfucker, stinging with sea salt and your own blood. You get a vivid flashback of the first time you’d seen a shark’s polished jaws when one was gifted to the Golden King by a foreign princess, teeth like chips of shattered ceramic. 

It’s only for a second. He lets go and you pull away and spit, horrified. Warm blood trickles down your chin before he leans in to lick it off and you lean away with a strangled sound in the back of your throat.

It takes a second for you to get your voice back. “ _ What the fuck are you doing? _ ” You wheeze. Your blood stains his teeth and makes them look whiter, and you wonder about sharks, whole and living, monstrous things.

But you’re in the arms of a worse monster than a shark. He glowers.

“Hold your breath.”

You don’t get to say anything more before he snatches the breathing charm off your neck and shoves you both into the water with a graceless splash. Your indignation is lost in the burning need for air that hits you as soon as you realize he’s dragging you down. Does he mean to drown you?

No, he swims too fast for that. He has other plans. He just doesn’t want you making noise for any of them. You’re whisked away from the atrium at dizzying speed and dizzying depth, your head pounding too much for you to keep track of where he’s taking you. Your eyes sting with seawater.

And then he throws you like a fisherman’s catch onto dry, red tile. You heave and cough, clutching your middle as you try to get your breath back into your lungs.

“I’ll be back shortly.” He says. “But don’t expect to wander around for a while.”

You look up but he’s gone, nothing but ripples in his wake. You’re in the same room he put you in last time, but now, there’s nowhere for you to go. The claustrophobia sets in immediately, even with the daylight softly diffusing through the glass panelled walls. You’re deeply tempted to start banging on them, screaming for help though you know there’s noone out there who will come to your aid.

You feel the weight of the water around you, it seems, pressing ever inwards like the inverse of an aquarium, like you’re a caged pet. If Eridan leaves you here too long…

You can’t bear thinking about that. You breathe in and out, slowly, counting the breaths and the seconds between them. You’re not going to panic. You’re not going to shut down like you did when you were a child.

You get your bearings back and shake saltwater out of your hair. You’re getting sick of saltwater, really; if and when you get back to the Golden Isles, you’re never touching another piece of salted caramel ever again.

For now, though, the thought of candy makes you queasy with hunger. 

You drag yourself to the trunk at the foot of the bed again, peeling yourself out of the dancer’s silks with maybe a little more force than is really necessary to get you out of such airy clothes, though from the way they pull tight between your fingers, that’s nothing to worry about: The fabric is fine enough to thread through a needle’s eye, but could probably bear your weight.

(There’s a thought. If only you were held in a tower, rather than beneath the sea.)

There’s a rough cloth and a basin beside the bed. You’d noticed it earlier, but you were too busy to make use of it; now you drink some of the fresh water for the sake of your cracked lips, sighing in relief as it soothes your throat, before you use the cloth and the last of the water to wipe the salt off your body.

Your hair is still sticky. Eridan still hasn’t returned, and without the breathing stone, you’re a prisoner. You can’t sleep with the hunger gnawing at your guts, either, and the water you drank can only do so much.

“Okay.” You say, to noone in particular, as you look around the room. “What do I have to work with in here?”


	8. intermission: A Hundred Days, part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy 4/13! Belatedly, from where I am, but it's gotta be 4/13 somewhere, right?
> 
> Intermission from Dualscar/The Dragon King's POV, wherein a few things are revealed. Sorry that it's an intermission, though. Also had some minor formatting trouble, since I started writing on Evernote, because docs is pain on mobile.

_Long ago, before the last of the Golden Kings._

 

“Excuse me.”

The wind tousles the white sail of the little skiff this human is perched in, shivering and soaked with sea spray and yet standing tall as he can manage. “Is this Dragon’s Gate? It matches the descriptions given to me, but I don’t have the personal experience to tell. Sorry to be a bother.”

It would be charming if it weren’t so surreal, this sunburnt figure bobbing on the waves. It was an age when the men of dry land knew magic in the world, when they told themselves stories in fear of those beneath the waves, and yet here he is. To have one dare to come to Dragon’s Gate, without an army, with nothing but his wits and his crown and his rickety little boat is strange enough to stop you from capsizing him out of spite.

You lean closer, twisting in on yourself until you’re no taller than he is. He watches with something approximating fear but that mostly brings to mind curiosity, and apprehension, less at the sinuous wrongness of your form and more at the possibility of an attack.

Your body drips with reforming flesh until you stand on the skiff with him, back straight and eyes narrow. He relaxes his hold on the tiller when you don’t make a move towards him, but there’s a tense moment between the two of you nonetheless where all you can hear is the slap of faint slap of water on the hull.

You break it first.

“Speak.”

You see him gulp, but he straightens his shoulders until he’s even with you, until he’s almost worthy of the crown he bears on his brow.

“I am James Garen Egbert, King of what once was the Golden Isles. I’ve come to make a deal with the King of Dragons, in the name of my own people, to the East of here.” His voice stays level, as do his eyes, but there’s something desperate in his tone, and he hasn’t even really said anything yet except that he’s doing his best to sound grand.

You would laugh if you weren’t so insulted. “But who are you here, with no armies and no kingdom, to dare come to the mouth of Dragon’s Gate, with no word or summons from the King of Dragons himself? Who are you, to keep your soul as your own and set your course for here at all?”

You circle him in the boat, barely making a sound on the boards. “What are you after? Treasure? Knowledge? You will take none of it from here, nothing of which you can bring back to your people. I, I am the King of Dragons, ruler of the sea, whose blood runs with magic that threads through the oceans of the world, and by whose words the sea storms recede or rage. My name is the sound of a rising tide, the glint of a hundred teeth in the depths, the crackle of lightning spreading across waves.”

You sneer. “And you. You child. You whelp. You would barter with me?”

“Well, yes.” He doesn’t even hesitate, instead carefully feeling his way across the boat, towards a lump in corner that you hadn’t noticed until now. You bristle as he turns his back to you, and you think of how easy it would be to sink your claws into him and be done with this foolish thing.

Something stops you, and you’re not sure what, but you don’t have the time to puzzle it out before he kneels before you and empties out the sack he’d brought with him. The sack itself is woven, but thin and fine, waterproofed with some kind of oil. Whatever’s inside, it’s worth the trouble of keeping it dry at sea, at least to him. He speaks to you while he unwraps it.

“This really was a last resort for us, and I had to pay my way here, so there isn’t as much as there would have been at the beginning of this journey. A ruby here, a sapphire there; but overall it’s intact, so I hope it’s a suitable offering.” There’s another cloth bundle inside, apparently to keep whatever it is from jostling around. When he unwraps it, he holds it up to the light.

“The first queen’s crown.” He says. The filigree is cracked, and a number of the jewels are missing, their settings bent out of shape by the obvious force it took to remove the stones. But it’s finely wrought, for human craft. “I offer you this, the last of my kingdom’s treasures, in exchange for a year’s prosperity, by your magic.”

He bows his head and holds it out to you, cradling it in his fingers with more than metal and stone- with the hope of his people, with their desperation and fear, this child king daring to come to Dragon’s Gate because there’s no other recourse he can think of but your power.

Gently, you pluck the crown from his hands. He looks up at you as he feels the weight lift from his fingers, and there’s a certain vulnerability there, there’s surprise and gratitude and anguish as you take his kingdom’s last treasure from him.

You fling it into the sea.

“I have a better proposal.” You tell him, tilting his face up towards you. He looks like he’s in shock, though you suppose that isn't too surprising a reaction. You cup his cheeks in your hands, sneering down at him. "I can think of a treasure more precious than a human trinket."

"That was all we had left from the treasury. That was the only thing I could bring.” He looks up at you at last. “What else is there to give?”

You smile. 

~!~

 

"A hundred days." He repeats, for the hundredth time since you'd brought him down to the gate itself. You'd set magic into the stone he wore clasped at his throat, to let him breathe- but only as long as he stayed within the confines of your palace. He fiddles with it now, obviously contemplating the consequences of tearing it away and throwing it where you'd thrown his trinket.

You stop him with a hand on his shoulder, each claw longer than a single joint on one of his own fingers. "A hundred days as you wait to die. Make no mistake: It will be a painless death, your body intact when I send it back for a _king's_ funeral. But your heart will remain under the waves when you leave."

He traces the spiraling lines of the pendant as you continue to speak, squeezing the too-thin skin so close to his throat. "With your return to the Golden Isles will be a hundred generations of prosperity after you. Your people will flourish." You smile again, and you see your own teeth in the vitreous gleam of the walls- hundreds of your own face smile back at you, with teeth glimmering like pearl and sharper than any beast. "Not that you'll be there to see it, if you succeed. This is the price you pay for my magic, and I will take no less."

He straightens though, and he takes his hands from the necklace. You can see it weigh on him, the mark of his imprisonment and a reminder of his fate, of the gravity and price of his insult, should he choose to pay it for his people. You don't expect him to, of course. He's a child, and a human, and your encounters with humans have always made them out to be willing to trade a hundred lives for a day of their own.

How could he trade one of his own, let alone a hundred? But he sets his lips in a thin line and turns his head to face you, and the gleam in his eye tells you he won't back down, not yet.

You give him three days, in your mind, before his will to live overpowers him. You can't fault him so, with his little skiff tethered in the easy reach of the Gate's mouth, but it will be a bitter lesson to bear for him and all the sweeter for you.

~!~

 

He stays for the three days that you count in your head.

You can watch him as you please, of course. He's miserable, but he bears it admirably, shivering in the room you'd had drained and dried for him. A spelled hole in the wall, once a broken window, now instead provides a small spring of fresh water for him to drink, or bathe in, if he takes a basin to it. His skin had reddened and crusted with salt the first two days, and while you didn't want things getting _comfortable_ for him, you didn't want to seem like you were making things unfair. 

This was unfair, and you knew so, now that a few days had passed, but this was for your pride, too, and your pride wouldn't let it so obviously be.

You watched him closely, though. He never asked for anything, and it seems he would have gladly borne the indignity of being kept in a bubble as he was without complaint, at least for the first week. He'd already lasted longer than you'd expected him to.

~!~

 

He stays for another two weeks. You’d actually forgotten he was there, until he went and started showing up in other parts of your palace.

He hasn’t noticed you yet, either, too engrossed in a sea-silk scroll that you know he can’t read, it’s not meant to be read, but he follows the lines of stitching like he might divine some meaning from them all the same.

You leave him to it until you find yourself frustrated by just watching. You’re not sure why. Maybe it’s the futility of his attempt, or how it reminds you that he’s here in the first place, that he has two more months promised to him, if he can bear it. It curls something fierce and terrible in your gut, that he's still trying, and you _know he won't make it, why draw it out_?

He looks up.

You scowl as he smiles, and he rolls up the scroll clumsily, and then swims just as clumsily back to his quarters.

You have better things to do than watch him. You have a kingdom to run, while his, likely as anything, flounders to further ruin.

~!~

 

He's still there by the next full moon, and your patience has run thin. Who does he think he is, to test you like this? He must be mocking you. No human in your long life has ever withstood a test like this; you're young for a dragon and younger still for a king, but you've lived a long enough life to know the workings of man. This is spite on his part, that he's stayed this long, risking his life as he is.

You find him with the scrolls again and this time you make certain that he knows you're there, and when he looks at you, you gesture for him to follow. If you swim a little faster than needed, then it's only enough that he knows he has to make haste. 

Your body shifts as you swim, until you're in the form you'd taken the throne in. You swim to the mouth of the gate, and while it's riddled with barnacles and bits of algae, his skiff is still there, still whole, waiting where you'd left it for him, and where you'd expected he'd have taken it by now. You frown at it, your tail lashing, and the movement makes the little boat bob in the too-still water. You're still waiting there for him when he finally catches up, breathing hard when he takes the first gulp of air he must have had since you'd brought him here.

You lift him into the little boat, and his legs are too weak to stand, for how long he's been in the water, how little time he's spent in the room you'd given him and how hard he must have had to swim to keep up with you. He looks up at you in confusion.

"Go home." You say. "Don't keep up this farce. You and I both know that you never meant to make a hundred days, and I've lost my patience with your games."

But the insolent little thing he is, he struggles to stand, shaking all over.

"This was never a game to me." He says.

And he pitches himself over the edge of the boat in a way that leaves no doubt that it's on purpose.

You stare at the ripples he leaves, at the boat bobbing ever so slightly from the movement, and then you realize he's not through with you yet.


	9. intermission: A Hundred Days, part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Looks like I'm really getting in the swing of things now!

 

You think he's trying to make a point of showing up where you'll find him, now that he's made his defiance, his intention, as clear as he can. 

He's not tailing you. He's too slow in the water for that. But he's showing up in more of the places you find your focus drawn, or perhaps your focus is drawn there because he's beginning to make this place a home.

You find him puzzling over the silk scrolls again, murmuring silently to himself and tracing his fingers along the bumps of embroidery.The threads were sewn in with fishbone needles, spun finer than a peeled hair so they lie almost flat on the page, and yet he tries and tries despite not knowing the words.

You find him, sometimes, in your own throne room. You see him among your courtiers, asking about your world, your culture, your territories beyond the gate itself, the stretches of land beneath the water where he cannot go. He asks, though you force yourself to only catch snatches when you listen, so as not to get lost in it, if there are other kings and other dragons.

You find him mostly in his room, the one you'd given him. It's starting to feel less like a prison, where he's borrowed maps of your kingdom to pore over as if he's hoping he might see them someday. He's collected shells and bones and bits of coral from the sea floor, and he's asked someone to teach him how to read the stitching script your people write in. You think to yourself- you wonder- what it could be that's keeping him here when you'd given him the choice of his freedom, when you'd made it plain what you thought of his attempt at saving his people.

You refuse to consider that perhaps he meant what he said, but now you're beginning to doubt yourself. 

He looks up from the scroll he's trying to study, a child's story, presumably when he hears the ripples against the edge of the tiles as you sink back down. It doesn't matter. He has two months left, plenty of time for a human will to break.

~!~

Two more weeks pass by. He's gone halfway through the time you'd agreed on by now, and it sours your mood whenever you're reminded of it. But you have to commend him on his dedication, bitter as it makes you.

It surprises you when you find he's made some kind of nest in that room of his, and surprises you more when you realize you're starting to think of it as really his. He's collected an assortment of garbage, really, but they fascinate him to no end- skeletons now, painstakingly tied together with sea silk, and whole shells and live corals that he keeps on the stairs leading into the water, like shelving.

You admit to yourself that it annoys you considerably, realizing he's befriended a couple of the servants despite barely being able to speak to them. You remind them sternly, when you find them, that he's either going to leave forever or die, and they return to their work sullenly, but you notice a number of treasures being strewn about his room next. Human coins from shipwrecks, a few cups, even a mirror, thoroughly stained with algae, but whole and surprisingly clear.

You let it pass. You expected reminding him of home might weaken his resolve. You're not sure why you're surprised when he's still there another week later, and you're not sure why your mood darkens further when he smiles at you, bright and blithe with his too-blunt teeth. 

If anything, it's concerning that you don't know. That you don't know means you're not sure how you'll feel when he leaves, or if it comes to it, when you take his heart.

It's starting to feel like that might actually be possible. You can almost feel it, warm and alive between your claws.

~!~

It takes until the sixtieth day for you to admit that he's really determined to do this, and the sixty-fifth to admit that you're worried. Not for him, but for your courtiers and your palace keepers and all the servants he's managed to win over. You can recognize the warmth they regard him with, the younger ones especially. It's common knowledge throughout the court what he's here for and how long he has left, but it's been so long since an outsider had come to the Gate. A land dweller, no less.

It gets to the point that you almost consider sparing him, and sending him back with the boon of your magic regardless of everything.

But neither your pride nor your word can take that, no. It keeps you up while you're coiled in the darkness of your own chambers, watching the moonlight filter through the water. In the distance you can see the light he keeps in his own, can vaguely see the silhouette he makes against the luminescent glass as he pores over another map.

You unwind yourself from your cavern. The soft, spongy coral you sleep in just barely stirs with the water as you slither towards the caverns below, the hallway that leads to his room, and as you make your way there your form melts and ripples until you're just about his size. 

There's no sound you make as you rise from the pool hollowed into the edge of his room, but he looks up all the same when your foot makes the first step onto the tile.

"Your Majesty." He nods, and the corner of his mouth tilts up like he's telling a private joke, though not a meanspirited one; supposedly, you're in on it, but you don't feel much like you're in on this joke at all.

You stand in front of him, where he's sitting cross-legged on the floor with a book, and you think it probably isn't very comfortable but someone has given him a mat of woven kelp fronds to sit on, or perhaps for sleeping. They've been meticulously dried, and probably took a while to assemble into a large enough thing, and there's a couple cushions of the same kelp, stuffed with what you think is probably sea grass.

Gifts, you realize. They've been making this room more comfortable for him, and he has thirty five days left to live, if he doesn't leave sooner than that. You run a hand across your face before you sit down across from him.

But you don't say a word of that, you have other things to say first.

"What are you doing?" You ask him. Your voice sounds strange here, quieter, less commanding. He smiles and spreads his hands across the silk pages, trying to spread them flat for you, but you shake your head. "I know you're trying to read that, and I know my courtiers are getting fond of you. Why are you doing this, when you know if you don't leave, you're going to die?"

He pauses. You expect him to brush you off with a joke. Instead, he speaks somberly, and you almost hear... pain, you think, somewhere in his voice.

"I've made my promise. A hundred days for a hundred generations, you said, and I accepted it. This isn't for my pride, and it never was- you gave me the choice to leave, but then my people would suffer if I did. What sort of a king would I be if I did that?"

You don't answer. There's nothing you can answer with. But he smiles at you, and there's a different color to it now; he smiles at you with the full belief that you _will_ grant him what you'd promised at the cost of his life.

He trusts you, is the thing, and he trusts you to keep a promise he'll never see. He trusts you with the future of his people.

Your frown deepens, and he stops smiling when you reach forward and grab him by the front of his shirt. He doesn't even have the decency to look _scared_ , merely concerned, like he'd said something rude.

"Listen to me." You hiss, right in his face. "Your people will forget your sacrifice. Your name will fade from memory. Humans, no matter how far they they range on the surface, are the same in this respect: They forget their heroes, they let them fade into legend, and then they let them fade into nothing at all." Your hands are shaking, and you only realize it when he wraps his own around your wrists; they're strong and broad, worn from sun and and wind, rope and salt, the fingers rough but careful. You grip tighter and draw him a little closer, looking him in the eye. "I don't want to kill you, but I've made my promise. More than that, I've made it _heard._ Do you understand, you fool? You will die, and so few will remember you of your own."

"It's worth it." He says, rubbing your hands, as if to placate you like a child, as if you aren't hundreds of years older than he, if not more. "It's worth it for them."

"It _isn't._ " You hiss back. You remember your father, and his father before him. Your father had killed your grandfather in his ascension, and you had killed your own in yours, though he was old and feeble, and it was mercy to snap his neck and devour his heart. You remember them, and you know few of your courtiers at present do now, though they remember their legends; they don't remember _them_ , their warmth, their wisdom, their souls. "They will forget you."

He shakes his head. "Their memory doesn't make this worth it. Their happiness does."

You fall silent, and very slowly, you let go of his shirt. When you straighten up, he does look a little pale, but it could be a trick of the coral lights outside the walls, blue-green and silvery.

"You are too good of a man to be a king." You say, as you turn away from him. "It would have been better had you been a tyrant. Then they wouldn't forget you."

"And they would be miserable." He says, his lips pressed into a thin line now, unsmiling and stern. He looks older now, though you're not sure if he's truly grown or it's because of what you've heard. "Were I a tyrant, I would never have come this far."

You think he'd be surprised, to know of the tyrants that have come seeking treasure here. But you don't have it in you to tell him, now, and you hate that you've been silenced so; you feel it sit in your gut like molten stone. You hate that this smiling boy before you wears a crown and bears its weight with more grace than the kings who've come before him.

"You would live." You say, so quietly you could swear you hear the currents outside the walls.

"Maybe I would." He answers, turning a page. You see his mouth shiver despite the pursed line of it, the weight of it all over his head, and you don't know if he's about to laugh again or if he's really about to cry. "I suppose we'll never know."

You stare as, very quietly, he murmurs another mangled poem to himself, his pronunciation too nasal and light, his vowels too long. You remain silent until you can't take it anymore.

"What makes this worth it to you?" You narrow your eyes at him, as he looks up again.

"I've told you before, haven't I?" He looks back down. "I want my people to be happy. I want them to flourish, with or without me."

"But why?"

He stops, and looks you in the eye, and you remember it like he'd scored the words into your bones, bright and merciless.

"Because. How could I dare live with myself, if I let them suffer when I could save them?"


	10. intermission: A Hundred Days, part 3 (END)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! We'll be returning to the main story proooobably next month, if things align just right.  
> I'm also sorry for everything that happens in this chapter.

The last of his days pass in a haze.  

You almost forget he's there, save for the brightness in the water when he passes with a guide, a glowfish in a bubble-like cage, or your servants and courtiers telling you where he is, what he's doing, what a wonderful and curious guest you've brought them, and how sad they will be to see him die. 

Then the sun came to set on the hundredth day. You watched that day pass to the taste of bile on your teeth, like an eel's bladder gone putrid, burst on your tongue; you knew what must be done, and it soured your belly that much further.

And why should you care, that he was going to die? You shouldn't. Regardless, you did. You swam to his rooms languidly, to tell him he'd won, and what he'd won, and at what cost. To seal the deal and take his heart. You rehearsed what you were going to say, carefully, like when you were much, much younger and had to rehearse your father's dying rites.

When you surfaced from the pool and looked around, you didn't see him at first. You thought perhaps, on this last day, his fears finally caught up with him, and you smiled to yourself at the thought that you were undefeated in this. You would call up a servant to clear out the room, and throw away or maybe give away the things he'd asked for, and return your books and scrolls where they belonged.

Slowly, silently, you ascended the steps, slimy and smooth underfoot but without leaving a single hitch in your stride. It was only when your foot met the dry, cool tile that you faltered, slipped even, but you caught yourself against the wall in surprise.

He was still here, after all. Somehow you hadn't seen him, until he stirred under a sheet of dried, woven kelp, scrolls and sun stones scattering as he moved. Had he buried himself in them?

He looks surprised to see you. "I was only having a nap." He says, rubbing his eyes. You hate that he smiles at you, and feel a kind of ache when he winces. "It's not the best place for a nap, though, is it? I wish I could sleep in the water like you do, it must be much more comfortable. Colder, too, though; that  _would_  be a problem."

"I've come to give you  _one_  last chance." You say. He looks surprised, as you scowl down at him. "Your life is forfeit unless you leave  _now_ , and I will rend your little boat in half with a swipe of my own tail if you don't take it and sail back to your wretched little kingdom."

"Stubborn one, aren't you?" He stands up, stumbling, wincing again. "And my leg's fallen asleep on me. I don't think it will look very dignified to show up to my own execution with a pins-and-needles sort of limp." He shakes his head and crosses his arms. "But that  _is_  where I'm headed. Not home, after I've spent the full hundred days here; I've spent a hundred days too many already just sitting around while my people  _starve_."

You pause, and your head even pulls back a fraction of an inch in surprise, the fins framing your face flattening against the sides of your head. There's that ice and steel in his eyes again, even with the mirthful little smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. There's an edge in his voice that threatens to cut into you, a sound like the splitting edge of a spear. 

He takes a step forward, and despite yourself, you almost,  _almost_ , take a step back.

"Don't wreck the boat, though." He says, holding up his hands to show them empty, to show that he has nothing that he could ( _imagine that he could_ ) harm you with. His smile comes a little more sincerely. "I think it might be better for you to send my body back in it. As proof that it's really me, of course. I've lost the crown, as it is; I don't think I have anything left that could identify me back home."

Something about that comes out wrong enough that you ask before you can stop yourself. You ask, quietly, more quietly than you know what to do with. "Wouldn't your people know your face?"

It's his turn to look surprised. "Oh." He touches his cheek, runs his thumb along what you think might be a scar. "I hadn't realized... no, they wouldn't. Let me tell you a story, if you would kindly listen."

You let him, and he tells you of home, of trees heavy with fruit and birds that he'd climbed as a boy, and a wind that burned warm with spices from the marketplace, even as far below the palace as it was. He tells you of a people that sailed scared and broken across the sea, until they found paradise and named it the Golden Isles, and flourished under the sun and wind that yielded them their fruit and grain. He tells you of how they loved their first king, that strong and broad-backed king that led them across the waves to their new home, so much they couldn't bear to see him die, and when he did, the royal family vowed that no one would ever know. Kings from then on, when crowned, wore masks and veils that bore the first king's face.

He tells you how, outside of the palace, none of his own people had ever seen him without something between them.

He tells you why he's here. He tells you of the waves that crushed the fishing boats and the fishermen, threw them against the rocks and cliffs. He tells you of the storms stirred in the belly of the mountains, cold and merciless, followed by the mud that made tombs of what were once farms. He tells you of how, even after all this, his people sought to remake their paradise from their ruin, praying in the frigid night to gods new and old. 

"Praying to their immortal king." He finished, and the thin line of his mouth pressed tight in what might have been a frown. "A fraud."

"How fitting." You watch him as impassively as you can make yourself. You don't care for his people, for what they've lost. "It's for this that you would give your life, and in doing so expose your family's greatest lie?"

"I've told you before, haven't I? Besides." The smile returns, impish, but with that edge you could bleed on. Not a child any longer. "They must think I've abandoned them. But I won't. I don't have the heart in me to do so."

He turns away from you, and you rest a hand on his shoulder.

"You have one more night, then, and I take your heart at dawn. Do you have any final requests?"

"Hm." He rubs his chin. There's hair on it, bristly and dark, and it seems to give him an idea. "Some kind of blade, and some oil. I'd like a shave." He turns to look at you over his shoulder. "And if that seems too simple for you, I'd like to sleep in a bed tonight, and to have a pleasant dream or two."

Despite yourself, you smile.

~!~

It's oddly fascinating to watch the ritual he prepares with a glassy blade he's provided, and the stoppered bottle of carefully melted fat one of your alchemists had eventually managed to produce. He washes his face thoroughly, and even cuts the hair on it as closely as he can without hurting himself, before he smears the fat onto his skin.

You think that's where it stops, and you wonder what it's supposed to do, until he surprises you again by swiping the blade very carefully across his the side of his face. Clumps of bristly hair and animal fat are scraped away, leaving smooth skin behind. He touches the skin in almost as much surprise as you look at it, though instead of being horrified like you might expect, he smiles.

"Looks like I'll be looking my best when my time comes." He says, running a finger along his cheek. "Better not do things halfway, then."

He hums to himself as he works, though you're not sure if it's some kind of nonsense tune he's made up or a song from home. He works slowly, carefully; four little scrapes with the blade at a time before he wipes it off on a kelp sheet to keep it clean before he repeats the process over, and he never nicks himself once.

By the time he's done, he looks younger; younger than even he had when you'd first met him sunburnt and salt stained on the surface of the waves, bobbing in his little skiff with only an old crown left to his name. 

That crown lies at the bottom of the sea now, probably being reclaimed by sand, coral, and algae. Another lost treasure among thousands of lost treasures.

He wipes the last of the animal fat off his face and smiles brightly at you. His teeth and hair look better than they had when you'd met him, healthier; you realize he looks younger because you can see his cheeks filled in now, with the food you'd given him and the rest he'd taken. How ragged had he been running himself, questing across the sea for Dragon's Gate?

You don't smile back, but you gesture towards the pile of books and bedding you'd had brought up for him. You suspect he'll spend the whole night reading as much as he can, torturing himself with memories and knowledge he won't be able to bring home. But you can easily suspect he'll sleep just fine, perhaps, knowing that he's won this over you, and secured a hundred generations for his people.

He's won your little game, and with it, your respect. This child king of land dwellers, this hopeful, noble fool... 

Well, he's earned it.

You slink into the water as he settles into the bedding, raised a little above the floor, and you dive down into the deeps until the light of his room is a distant, vitreous glow.

~!~

Dawn comes faster than you expect it to, and it was  _you_  who spent the entire night awake. You sit upon your throne with your back straight and your hands on the armrests, but your tail lashes long and sinuous as a gulping eel, flicking droplets of water into the cool, yellowy light.

When he rises out of the water, onto the platform before your throne, he bows. You're not sure if it's from the exertion of being made to swim his own way here, or if he means it as respect. It doesn't matter now. There's a lump in your throat as you tilt his face up, a stone in the back of your mind with the weight of wrongness and rueful pride though you manage to speak around it.

"James Garen Egbert." You almost sneer, but he doesn't deserve that; your face and tone are perfectly even, though perhaps you do scowl. "You've won for the people of the Golden Isles a hundred generations of prosperity, and today, you die for it. Do you have any last words?"

"Of course." He says. You can feel the silence pressing in as your courtiers watch him, all surprisingly composed, all waiting for what he says next when he turns to face the court. "Thank you, for making the stay a joy on its own. Thank you for taking my offer in the first place at all." He turns to face you, quieter than when he'd addressed the court; for you alone. "Thank you for what you're about to do. Sincerely. I'll die happy knowing my family will prosper."

So he has a family back home, then. You wonder if he has a child, a prince or princess who will see him one last time in death. 

He nods. "I'm ready."

Your fingers glow with all the might and power of the sea, and like breaking through the surface in a dive, you plunge your hand into his chest. 

He wheezes in shock, or maybe pain. It must hurt more than he was expecting as you close your hand around his thrumming, beating heart, and you start to pull.

To your amazement, he doesn't try to stop you. Tears stream down his face, but he keeps a brave one, mouth shut to muffle any noise as you slowly, inexorably, pull his heart out of him. There's no wound, but there's blood, all over your hand when you've drawn it out at last. He collapses against you, then, still warm, but no longer breathing.

You hold him close, and without a word, you crush his heart in your fist.

It's done.

~!~

The body looks peaceful when, with a wave of your hand, you restore his little skiff to its original state and two of your courtiers arrange him in it, pillowing his head on a fine skein of byssus and other riches besides, a kingdom's worth of treasures made or dredged from the sea around the Gate. There's no weeping, because dragons don't weep, but there are whispers of mourning all around you, a susurrus of little blessings he'll bring home with him: For the fish to be plentiful in his people's nets, for every oyster found by a child to hold a pearl, for every sailor lost at sea to be remembered only in fondness.

Two of your finest soldiers will take him back where he'd come from, guided by the stone you'd crushed out of his heart. They will come upon the land in the dead of night and seek his family. They will take the body and do with it what they will. They will bury the stone in the center of his kingdom, and there it will lay your blessing on the land, for a hundred generations and more, should you live to maintain it for more than that.

When all your courtiers have gone beneath the waves, still you wait at the gate, wondering. Thinking. Your right hand is still crusted with human blood, darkening to the color of the coral around you, flaking away in the sea breeze. He was a good man, and perhaps you will wish you'd known him better before the offer you'd given him was made in your mind.

Not that you can take it back now. You will hold that thought against your own heart for the remainder of your days, and perhaps when you die and your son devours your heart, your secret will die with you.

The tale of James Garen Egbert and the hundred days he's spent in Dragon's Gate is over, and you wonder what will be told of him in a land you will never see.

 

END INTERMISSION


End file.
